Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the previous day. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
Cover by Joe Corroney
– BOOM! Studios will celebrate 25 years of Farscape with the simply named “Farscape: 25th Anniversary Special,” releasing August 2024. The 64-page book will feature stories by Sam Humphries, Sarah Gailey, Ramón K. Pérez, Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly, Cameron Chittock, and Keith R.A. DeCandido, who co-wrote the “Farscape” comics published by BOOM! from 2008 to 2011.
The publisher has launched a Kickstarter pre-order campaign, which includes a two-volume hardcover reprint of the previous “Farscape” comics. Created by Rockne S. O’Bannon in collaboration with The Jim Henson Company in 1999, Farscape tells the story of John Crichton, an astronaut flung into the far future by a wormhole, and the various enemies and allies of different species he makes trying to find his way back home. The Kickstarter campaign will run until March 21.
– In an interview with AIPT, Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips revealed the trade paperback of “The Enfield Gang Massacre” will include a new six-page story, titled ‘Blew It.’ Set in 1868, a few years before the main series, it depicts the titular gang on an escapade involving a steam train. Condon comments, “I wanted to include something fun because our main story is very intense and very sad. I think it’ll be a nice way to end the trade because it sort of promises that there may be more to come from the gang, considering that they have a history beyond this miniseries.” The trade releases on April 10.
– Dark Horse will collect Jeremy Massie’s coming-of-age series “Holler” in paperback on September 24. The eight-issue comic, originally released by It’s Alive! in 2020, follows a young man in rural Virginia during the early 1990s, who escapes his stifling family and conservative hometown by forming a grunge band with his best friend. The trade will have a new cover, bonus pin-up pages, and a new, four-page afterword comic. It will retail at 280 pages for $29.99.
– Brian Michael Bendis has signed a first-look deal with Amazon Studios, who are already developing three TV series based on his comics: Jinx, Murder Inc., and Pearl. Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon will serve as showrunners on Jinx, while TKO Studios founder Tze Chun will serve in the same role on Murder Inc., and Chris Collins (The Man in the High Castle) will oversee Pearl. Michael Avon Oeming and Michael Gaydos, who created the latter two comics with Bendis, will serve as executive producers on those shows.
If produced, the shows will mark the second adaptations of Bendis’s creator-owned comics, following Powers, the PlayStation Network’s shortlived foray into original programming, originally developed at FX. (Series based on “Cover” and “Scarlet” were optioned by HBO Max and Cinemax, but there has been no word on either project since they were first announced.) Bendis’s Jinxworld imprint is currently published by Dark Horse Comics, which also possesses the print rights to comics released by Amazon’s comiXology; whether or not the relationship played a role in the deal is, of course, pure speculation at this point.
– Prime Video have also greenlit a series based on Richard Dominguez’s superhero comic “El Gato Negro (The Black Cat).” The show, simply titled El Gato, will star Mexican actor Diego Boneta (2022’s Father of the Bride), and be showrun by Eric Carrasco (Foundation, Supergirl) with Turi Meyer and Alfredo Septién (Stargirl, Smallville). It will follow Frank Guerrero (Boneta), the son of a wealthy Mexican businessman, who returns home after his father’s death, and discovers he was the titular vigilante. The series will be filmed in English and Spanish this spring. “El Gato” was created by Dominguez in 1993, and originally in development with Robert Rodriguez (and Boneta) at Apple TV+ in 2019.
– Finally, here’s a round-up of anime and manga news. Parasyte: The Grey, Yeon Sang-ho’s live-action series based on Hitoshi Iwaaki’s sci-fi horror manga, will release on Netflix on April 5; The Fable, an anime adapting Katushisa Minami’s assassin comedy series, will premiere on Hulu and Disney+ Star on April 7; and “Detective Conan” is collaborating on merchandise with London’s National Gallery to celebrate their respective 30th and 200th anniversaries. Lastly, Crunchyroll confirmed they are testing the use of AI to rush out the creation of subtitles faster, which is going over as well as you might expect. As always, for a more comprehensive look at the latest involving Japanese comics, including series with no confirmed releases in the Anglosphere, follow the good people at Anime News Network.
